Category: Acrobat

If Acrobat was free, everyone would own it. Acrobat is a very sophisticated application allowing you to work with, create, enhance and edit those amazing PDF files.

Sadly, Acrobat isn't free and not everyone owns it. People who do not have Acrobat still need to work with PDF files, which is where Adobe's free Acrobat Reader comes in. Reader, a very capable piece of software in its own realm, allows you to browse, print and interact with PDFs.

However, Reader is a Read-Only application… at least that's what most people believe. Why? When downloaded and installed on a computer, Reader is in fact just a Read-Only application. But that is only true for some PDF files.

A PDF file can be given the ability to save form data (from a fillable PDF form), have comments and markup added and signed digitally… in Reader! These special fortifications to a PDF file must be enabled in Acrobat itself (not Reader), and are applied to PDF files individually.

To add these capabilities to a PDF file, you must have the PDF file open in Acrobat. Then choose Advanced > Extend Features in Adobe Reader. Acrobat presents an information dialog box which explains what capabilities are being added.

Once enabled, the PDF can't be edited. For this reason, Adobe has wisely given you a button labeled Save now, which opens the Save As dialog box and allows you to give this super-charged PDF file a unique name (preserving the original PDF for possible future edits).

Send the enhanced PDF to someone who has only Reader, and they will see that the document's capabilities are extended and they will be able to utilize the file in ways otherwise impossible in Reader!

I teach two levels of Acrobat online (yes, the program is that deep). Click here to learn about my beginner Acrobat class. Click here if an advanced Acrobat class is more your style.

Huh? SKATAT… What? I'll explain in just a minute.

In earlier releases of Acrobat, it was easy to get your zoom tool active – either click on the zoom tool with your mouse, or tap the Z key. Want to try out your new link? Activate your Hand tool to test it. Either click on the hand tool with your mouse, or tap the letter H. Voila – hand tool activated. I used these "speed keys" all the time, and have taught them to all my classes. "Tap the letter H" was heard many times per class back in the day.

Something happened when Adobe released (I believe it was) Acrobat version 6. The cool speed key trick no longer worked. I remember thinking, "Oh no! I not only teach this trick constantly, but I use it perpetually as well."

I was certain Adobe wouldn't remove such a productivity-boosting feature like this. I went digging through the Preferences. I never did find the phrase 'speed keys,' but I did find a rather lofty and verbose option labeled Use Single-Key Accelerators To Access Tools under the General heading, and it was turned off by default.

After consulting with two dictionaries and several PHD scholars, I determined that turning this feature on would allow me to use those 'speed keys' once again. It worked in Acrobat 6, and has worked in every version since!

To use "Single key accelerators," you simply tap a single key.

There are many more. You can press F1 on your keyboard in Acrobat to bring up the Help system and search for keyboard shortcuts for the complete list of available commands.

Oh, there's a catch–these 'Single key accelerators' ONLY work when your view panel is active. If you have just clicked on a bookmark, you've activated the Navigation panel so you'd need to click on the right-side of your screen (View panel) for the speed keys to work.

What other productivity-energizing features does Acrobat sport? Sign up for my Acrobat classes and find out!

You couldn't escape it in recent weeks. There was a new plan to reform the United State's health care system. There were screams for the promised transparency. They shoved, pushed, yelled… and the level of rhetoric was feverish.

In an attempt to bring the general public into the arena of discussion, the White House apparently released a PDF in which "Stability & Security for All Americans" was proclaimed.

I had a few problems with the PDF and none of them had anything to do with politics or health care at all. The PDF had the White House's URL at the bottom, but I noticed the URL text was NOT linked. Finding this curious, I inspected the document a bit more closely. By starting Acrobat's Accessibility Quick Check (Advanced > Accessibility > Quick Check), I discovered that the PDF was not tagged and therefore would not pass the government's own "508" standards. (In 1998, Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act to require Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities.) Imagine that–the White House, at the very TOP of the government's chain of command, did not follow the rules. Curious, huh?

In fairness, I have no way of knowing if this was an official, government-sanctioned flyer. It did not have a digital signature and the Document's properties revealed no metadata pointing back to the document's origin.

So now I was curious about that famous 2000+ page health care bill that has dominated the domestic news reports. The White House promised that the bill would be released for anyone to read… ANYONE. I went searching around the Web for the document and I quickly found links to the bill in PDF format.

I downloaded the PDF and opened it in Acrobat 9 Pro.

As promised, it was more than 2,000 pages (2,409 to be exact). I immediately saw a Digital Certification across the top of the view panel: "Certified by the Superintendent of Documents" at the US Government Printing Office. The PDF was for real.

Two things about the PDF screamed at me immediately. First, it was extremely long. Second (are you ready for this?), the PDF contained no bookmarks. None. There was no way to intelligently read and navigate the document other than to start on page 1 and end at page 2409.

Need to find if the new bill affects retired military's TriCare coverage? No bookmark to help you find it. Care to guess whether this is a tagged document that might meet the government's own criteria for "508 Compliancy"? Nope. Untagged. Unacceptable.

I know one famous address that needs an Acrobat class. Might you too?

Here's the scenario: You work at a law firm. "Client Z" has a date in court coming soon. You have created a PDF Portfolio for "Client Z." This portfolio contains dozens of individual documents. There is one document that is still missing–It's a police report from another district. The report arrives just in time… via mail. This paper document needs to be added to the PDF Portfolio, and quickly! Not to worry. This can be accomplished with a few mouse clicks (you'll also need a scanner).

Place the document in the scanner and start Acrobat 9. Click the Create Task button and then select PDF From Scanner (or choose File > Create PDF > From Scanner).

Select Custom Scan.

Select your scanner from the Input options and any other appropriate settings (such as Color Mode and Resolution).

In the Output section, select Append to existing file or portfolio and browse for your target PDF Portfolio (or PDF file if you simply wish to add pages to an existing PDF file).

Click the Scan button and Acrobat will ask you for a file name (if you are appending a PDF Portfolio). The scanning process progresses and, when complete, the target portfolio will be opened automatically with the newly-scanned document included.

I was the guest presenter an AcrobatUsers.com eSeminar this past week. The topic was Scanning and OCR in Acrobat 9. This one-hour eSeminar is available for viewing online and covers this and other amazing scanning and OCR capabilities of Acrobat 9.

Learn how to make your PDF files interactive and capable! Sign up for my live, online Acrobat 9 Professional class.

A while back I wrote about Acrobat's watermark feature. At that time, I created the watermark by typing the word DRAFT in the watermark creation dialog box.

There's another type of watermark possible in Acrobat 9–an image-based watermark that will allow you to have your company logo display on each page. The image watermark can be bold or subtle, and can appear on whatever pages you choose.

To insert an image-based watermark, choose Document > Watermark > Add.

Select File as the source and browse for your desired image file. (Accepted file formats are .pdf, .bmp, .rle, .dib and .jpg.) In my example, I selected a PDF file that I made from a coat-of-arms image. In the preview pane, you will immediately see a preview of the image and it will seem rather harsh. Not to worry. The image comes in with an opacity setting of 100% by default. For images, I like to dial the opacity percentage down to around 20%. Depending on the dimensions of your image file, you may opt to scale it to each targeted page. (In my example, I have it set to scale to 80%).

There are other options with which you may want to try such as image rotation and behind versus on top of page. By clicking the Appearance Options link, you can further tweak the watermark to show or not when the document is printed, and/or displayed on screen.

If your document has varying page sizes, you can opt to keep the watermark's position constant or not. You can even specify coordinates to place your watermark in a specific location on your pages.

If you need to apply this new custom watermark to more than your current PDF, you can click the Apply to Multiple button to select other files to include.

Didn't know Acrobat could do that? Don't feel bad. There are dozens of tricks and features that most folks don't know about. Sign up for my live, project-based online Acrobat 9 Professional class to learn lots of neat and useful tips, tricks and  techniques that will make your PDF files stand out and be noticed.

When I started teaching Adobe Acrobat (this was way back in the 1770s), I had a very bright student named John. He was asked by his colleagues to apply his digital signature to an important PDF file. The document had something to do with government.

Since they hadn't taken an Acrobat class and knew little of Acrobat's advanced features, many of John's colleagues simply placed the default Acrobat Digital Signature on the document.

Not John. John learned Acrobat on his crude computer (it was made of wood, naturally). And during his Acrobat training, John learned that he could go to Acrobat's Preferences ([Ctrl] K on a PC, or [Cmd] K on a Mac), select Security and then click New next to the Appearances list box.

John chose to configure his Digital Signature's custom appearance by importing a scan of his actual signature. He chose just a few text descriptors to show, like Name, Date & Reason–to keep his custom digital signature appearance unique and uncluttered. He gave his custom appearance a name (he used his own–he wasn't very creative).

John attended his group's big convention in Philadelphia that July. It was hot, but the pretzels and cheese steaks were awesome, so they say.

When John's colleague Thomas sent him the all-important PDF file, John grabbed Acrobat's Digital Signature tool (I think the icon was a quill back then) and drew a rather large rectangle.

John then entered his secret password in the dialog box (they only had 2-bit encryption back then–I'll let you make the joke on this). Unlike his unlearned colleagues, John knew that if his digital signature was to be noticed, it had to look different. He confidently clicked the down arrow next to Appearance, found his newly-created custom appearance and selected it. He then chose I am the author of this document from the reason for signing.

John Hancock's digital signature was huge, and unique. Everyone at the convention was very impressed… except Thomas (it was Thomas who actually authored this important historical PDF). In the end, Thomas had the last laugh… his house is on the nickel today, and John just has an insurance company.

Looking for Acrobat training? Join David for a live, 2-day online class. Click here for more information.

You've received an email from a colleague. Attached is a PDF file of the document you are both working on.

Your colleague has posted a Sticky Note comment with a design suggestion. You open the file, read the comment and decide that the suggestion might be a smart idea. You do not, however, have the authority to approve the change alone, so you will need to run it by your team leader.

You could send an email back to your coworker explaining that you need to run it by the boss. This email alone, even though it is referring to the PDF file, is detached from the workflow process.

To engage the workflow into your reply, you could grab a commenting tool and make an additional note on the PDF that will inform your coworker of your intent to run his idea up the chain. This way, the PDF file itself is the platform of communication, but there are now two Sticky Notes that refer to the same topic. They are physically close to one another on the page, but are indeed still two separate thoughts.

To thread these two comments together, one could locate the initial comment in the Comments Panel. Select the comment by clicking its entry in the Comments Panel or on the note's icon on the page. Click the Reply Button at the top of the Comments Panel.

Enter the annotation and it shows up as a threaded entry in the original note, and in its own sub-entry in the note's popup window on the page!

An entire conversation can transpire about, and within, an individual note. You can take advantage of this feature within email reviews, server-based, or those hosted on Acrobat.com. Clear, efficient and cool!

Looking for Acrobat training? Join David for a live, 2-day online class. Click here for more information.

I recently had a student in an Acrobat class pose an excellent question. She was a teacher. She had a PDF file of a student's work. Other students had posted comments on the file as critiques. The file's author was unknown to the critical participants, but each comment left on the file was easily identifiable by an author's name.

Once the comments were completely applied, she wanted to remove any unique author's name from the comments. She knew that she could change the author's name for each comment individually by right-clicking a comment, selecting Properties and changing the author's name on the General tab. Not hard, but her file had dozens of pages and more than 100 comments. She was stumped, and knew she didn't want to apply the changes one at a time.

My solution was to have her open the Comments panel. I had her select any of the comments in the Comments Panel. Next she pressed [Ctrl] [A] to select all of the comments.

By right-clicking the now selected comments and choosing Properties, the Properties dialog box represented (and controlled) the properties of the selected comments.

Finally, I had her type Anonymous into the author field of the General Tab. This step quickly changed the Author for all of the comments.

It's worth noting that with the comments all selected, one could universally change the icon, color and opacity of the selected comments.

Quick and easy. Without this trick, she would have spent hours adjusting comment properties individually. With this trick… done in a flash!

Looking for Acrobat training? Join David for a live, 2-day online class. Click here for more information.